A is for Aden and Z is for Zanzabar

A is for Aden and Z is for Zanzibar... Now what is between? For the world wide classical era philatelist and stamp collector, a country specific philatelic survey is offered by the blog author, Jim Jackson, with two albums: Big Blue, aka Scott International Part 1 (checklists available), and Deep Blue, aka William Steiner's Stamp Album Web PDF pages. In addition, "Bud" offers commentary and a look at his completely filled Big Blue. Interested? So into the Blues...

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

The Big Blue Checklist is Completed! What is next?

Mascot stamp: Austria Offices in the Turkish Empire

1908 Scott 49 1 Piaster deep blue/blue "Franz Josef I"

The Big Blue Picture

On February 12, 2011, "Aden", the first country blog post and checklist, was published. Now, six plus years and 400 country posts and checklists later, the primary goal has been reached- The checklist for Big Blue (Scott International Part I 1840-1940) is complete!

Truthfully, this became a larger project than was anticipated at the outset. I elected to do a more thorough review, with historical and philatelic information added for each country. And it was as fun as it appeared!

This might be a good time to download a copy of the checklist(s) for your personal use.

For comments about the use of the checklists and further links about the checklist, see the appendix at the end of this section.

And one more thing...

Author's copy of Big Blue Checklist

Spiral bound, 107 double-sided pages

Formatted by Chris Whitehouse

A special bonus for those that would like a compact BB checklist for their own use!Wait! There is more! An Excel Spreadsheet Big Blue Country Collection Inventory!
Chris Whitehouse, a reader of this blog, and a user of the checklists, has graciously let myself and all readers have access to his compact checklist, and Excel BB Collection Inventory.

In his words...

Well, as promised, I wanted to provide you with a
couple of "Big Blue Inventory" projects I have been working on.
I made these for my own use with my collection, but would be happy if you
wanted to share them with your readers.

Big Blue Checklist Page - Formatted into three columns

Printed from a PDF File

First, is a consolidated Big Blue Checklist I put
together in a PDF book format. It is basically your checklist in a
3-column format that is 215 pages including the title page I made. Of
course, folks can do with it what they want, but it would be reasonable to send
it to a printer and have it printed out and bound into a single volume
book with plastic spiral binding. Then one could simply use a
pen/pencil or highlighter to mark off the stamps they own and easily see what
they need, etc. Would be nice and compact to carry to stamp shows,
dealers, clubs, etc.

Big Blue Country Inventory 1997 Edition

Joe Lill & Chris Whitehouse Enhanced Spreadsheet

Second, is an Excel spreadsheet Big Blue collection
inventory. Now, full disclosure, I started with the 1997 BB edition spreadsheet made
by Joe Lill and provided by him on your blog some years ago. So
all the counts for the possible stamps for each country are
his. However, I modified it in several ways. I wanted to be
able to capture all the "extra" stamps that we put either in the
margins of the pages or on added blank pages, so I added a column for
"Extras" that will be incorporated into the total count. I
also added a column that will give you the % completion for each
country in addition to the total % completion. Also, I "programmed
in" a red/yellow/green color scheme to each % completion cell so that
if you are below 20% = red; above 80% = green; between 20-80% = yellow.
That way, you can at a glance see the overall stasis of each country and
the total collection. I also added a "Summary Statistics" table
at the end that will summarize all your data.

I plan on starting to use these for my general WW collection
in Big Blue and hope they might be useful for others too.

The compact BB checklist in Word format is available here.(Errata Update on compact BB checklist:For British Guiana, page 25, add..1931

205,206,207,208,

1934

210,211,,212,213),214,

1935 Silver Jubilee223,224,225,226,

1937 Coronation227,228,229,

1938

230,234,

231,232,233,

The Excel Spreadsheet Big Blue Country Collection Inventory is available here.(Errata Update on Excel BB Country Inventory spreadsheet: after downloading, change the total number of spaces for Philippines to 217, Southern Nigeria to 14, Southern Rhodesia to 51, and Wurttemberg to 180. Total should be 33933. Thanks to Joe Lill for checking.)
Wow! I am blown away - and I'm sure the readers are too - with the fine work and generosity of Chris! We are deeply grateful.

Canada 1929 Scott 158 50c dark blue

Schooner "Bluenose"

Valedictory observations....

* I'm more convinced than ever that continuing with the BB checklist, even after I decided to use the Steiner PDF pages (Deep Blue) for my collection, was a good idea. It gave me and gives me a tangible and reachable goal for a country, and I feel better about leaving expensive spaces empty in Steiner.

* And a most grateful thanks to the blog and website authors listed along the left column, - I learn a lot from them. And thanks specifically to Bob of "Filling Spaces" blog fame, who gave me the Big Blue checklist idea,.... Bob, look what you caused!

* Where to go from here? Well, check the "Out of the Blue" section below!

USA 1847 Scott 2 10c black/bluish

"George Washington"

Appendix

BB Checklist Comments....

* The checklist is intended for personal use only- no commercial use, or further publication by third parties. This is my work solely, and I have author rights.* The Scott numbers are clearly copyrighted by Scott/Amos. and all Scott catalogue number rights- and restrictions - in terms of use of the Scott catalogue numbers- reside with them.

* The general checklist(s) are stripped of all comments and specific valuations. Comments and observations regarding the checklist are found in the "Big Blue" section of each country post. And all valuations $10 or greater are noted there.

* Recall the checklist almost always follows the actual '69 edition BB exactly, So some Scott numbers do not appear sequential, if in fact that is how the spaces are presented on the page. The advantage is the album page and the checklist should have a 1:1 correlation- very easy to check what you have or don't have.

* The later BB editions (example:1997) also follow the checklist without major problems, except the edition may start a new page for a category. The '41/'43/'47 editions follow about 90% of the time - But the first page and the end of category sections may be different.

* This is not a spreadsheet, but a checklist with spatial clues.

However, there is a project afoot to put the BB checklist into an Excel format. For current information on that see..

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-big-blue-checklist-excel.htmlAnd, as a "teaser", there will be an announcement regarding more BB checklist spreadsheets available by another contributor soon. !* The checklist is "living", that is I actively correct the (fortunately few!) mistakes that have crept in as they are discovered, or are brought to my attention by readers. I have also gone back and added new active numbers (example: the Portuguese colonies "Ceres" issue Scott catalogue revision).

Admittedly, the primary goal - the reason for beginning the blog posts- is finished. The BB checklist(s) have been published for all the countries and spaces in Big Blue 1840-1940.

Here is what I have in mind...

* Bud's Big Blue - a scan of all the pages of Bud's completed! Big Blue album - will continue at least for several more years. Thanks Bud for sharing your wonderful full pages of BB!

* My internal standards for blog country posts have become a bit more exacting. I plan to return to the first one-third of countries in BB and expand the initial post, probably with an auxiliary post focusing on the country's stamp issues themselves. And I will substitute/improve the stamp scans for a number of posts.

* I have had to be single minded (goal oriented and time aware) with the blog, as I needed to publish some 400 posts to finish the BB checklist. That has been accomplished. I can now afford to wander in terms of topic, country, stamp issue, or contemporary observations about the current state of our hobby.

* Already in the hopper, ready to be published, are more in-depth articles. As "teaser" examples, there is a post about the myriad Argentina watermarks seen during the classical era, and five posts looking at the early issues of Austria. !

* I plan to keep it simple and fun for myself and the readers. Frankly, I see this as a hobby- nothing more, nothing less.

Outstanding work, I've been a big fan for awhile now. I'm sure you've probably mentioned this somewhere in the blog before, but what's the grand total number of spaces in BB Vol I? Did you ever tally up the total catalog value? Again, just curious, I have no real need to know these things.

The answers to the questions you are posing are both straightforward and elusive. ;-)

My BB has 34,276 spaces. BUT my BB doesn't exist as a real edition as such, as it is "virtual" - I borrow country spaces from the 1940s editions that were edited out in the '69 Edition. And I do not include spaces from the '69 edition in which I don't collect (have no interest), such as U.S. cut squares.

However, there is an accurate measurement of a real edition - the "97- in which Joe Lill has counted 33.882 spaces.

As far as CV for BB, again, it is not so simple. Sometimes a space can be filled for less CV with a used specimen; at other times with an unused specimen. Then one would also need to pick the least expensive stamp for the space among often multiple possible choices.

So has a CV for the whole BB been done? Not yet, but there is a project going on right now for a '43 edition BB. So far, the A through E countries have been tabulated.

Chris,Great work! I'm in the process of moving my personal sheet to your template. Along the way, while proofreading Jim's totals I found four mistakes in my sheet: Philippines should be 217, Southern Nigeria 14, Southern Rhodesia 51 and Wurttemberg 180, for a total of 33933.Joe

Joe- I added this note to the download section for the country inventory spreadsheet:(Errata Update on Excel BB Country Inventory spreadsheet: after downloading, change the total number of spaces for Philippines to 217, Southern Nigeria to 14, Southern Rhodesia to 51, and Wurttemberg to 180. Total should be 33933. Thanks to Joe Lill for checking.)

Joe,Great, thanks for the update on the totals, I will make those corrections in my file. Hope you didn't mind me using your spreadsheet as my starting point. Glad you will be using my template, I think it is nice to see your overall progress at a glance by color. Let me know if you run across any additional errors.

I've said it before and I will say it again, your work has helped to revive the idea of worldwide collecting as a legitimate, and accomplishable, goal for collectors.

I am very happy that the checklist is now in a PDF format, but what might be even more valuable, once you finish your reworks and editings of the first third, would be to transform the blog articles of each nation into a PDF file as well, so that there will be a permanent printed copy of this exceedingly important resource available should, heaven forbid, something unexpected affect the digital version.

(Perhaps a copy could even be donated to the APRL so that it would be available for future generations through their resource bank).

And then, there is always the idea you could write a 2.0 version to cover the issues from 1940 to the end of the Minkus Globals that you have (yours run to 1955??) if you really wanted to be ambitious :) Or even cover the years defined by Yvert as the "Semi-Modernes" up to 1970, if you really wanted to be ambitious and found yourself with more free time in the future.

But if nothing else more than this blog is your legacy to the global philatelic community, it will still be a massive legacy that will have been left.

Reading through the comments here, I can begin to see a common thread regarding a desire to have a printed version of the blog posts.

Not that I'm volunteering for this, but I just wanted to provide my thoughts on a couple of potential options for doing this and various issues involved.

I’ve often thought of this too and even remember several years back suggesting to Jim he should put his blog posts into a book. I even played about with doing this myself, initially for Aden, and it turns out to be quite time-consuming, with the hardest part actually placing all the photos/figures in the right place in relation to the text. Now, theoretically this could be done, using a two-column format and printing on both sides of the page (similar to the checklist I just did), but still very time-consuming and not sure how big it would end up being in the end.

Just brainstorming…a range of options could be considered. One would be to approach APS about publishing it as a book (turns out APS does publish their own philatelic literature). In that scenario, Jim would be the “author” and possibly, maybe myself (and maybe others?) would be the “editor” (I have experience editing a book before in my professional life). The benefits of this, of course, would be having it in a permanent hardcopy version that would be indexed and professionally produced and the professional recognition of having published a book, etc. How many people would buy the book given that all the information is already available free on the website? I don’t know, but I bet more than you’d expect. Plus, you could also have some kind of agreement that all the “profits” go back to APS or APRL? This would be further incentive for folks to buy the book as it would be seen as 'supporting the hobby.'

Another option would be to simply put everything together as a two-column PDF file that one could keep on their own computer and take to a printer and print out themselves (again similar to the checklist). I would be less excited about doing this (due to the large amount of work involved and no profession recognition of having published a book), but could think of a model that this could be done as a “community project” where multiple people are involved. For example, each person takes a certain number of letters of the alphabet to work on.

In my opinion, the second option might be harder because you would have to actually place each figure in their correct place in relation to the text. Whereas, if APS published it, we’d just have to label each picture with a figure # and then insert the figure # where it needs to go in the text. Then, APS as the publisher would arrange the figures where they needed to go. Plus, any project where there are a large number of people involved is likely to run into various “issues”

Some other issues to think about…What would be included? It would make sense to include only the country posts, but what about album posts (such as the popular Minkus Goldilocks post or other album comparisons?). Also if you are continuing to write more in-depth posts on certain countries, should those be added to the original country posts? Opens up a whole can of worms as somebody will not be happy with what was included vs. what was left out.

Chris would be lovely to have a hardbound copy of the blogposts or pdf file. One could think of a First Volume containing the general posts (album post and album comparisons) as a kind of introduction and the country posts.

A second volume could comprehend the indepth articles and to be published articles...

I'm no hero with word, excell, pdf at all so I really should get a kind of template where I could copy one text/post after another without having to think (too much). But if I can be of a little bit of help...

As I noted elsewhere, this is a fantastic resource and well worth the effort (your effort!) for what it provides world collectors. It helps get under some degree of control what I always saw as the very large and barely attainable goal of collectors filling the Big Blue with good advice as to which stamps belong in which (sometimes confusing) spaces along with really helpful country profiles and other guidance. This mountain is something I've barely even begun to climb at my advanced age of 68, one which most collectors would devote decades to doing (and start much earlier, I suppose).

To me, the Big Blue was always the holy grail of albums. I know the Minkus Global and certainly the much more recent Steiner pages contain many more spaces (Steiner has spaces for "all" of them), but the elegance of the International's page layout, size, and design always seemed to make it the best of the lot. I suppose someone with enormous resources now might try to fill every single Scott Specialty album or every space on all the Steiner pages (There must be one billionaire out there with a little time on his hands). But, for mere mortals, there has to be some limit, and the Big Blue comes pretty close to what most collectors might aspire to.

The great majority of Volume 1 Scott Internationals for sale have only a few thousand stamps in them, and it's a rare album that has even five or six or seven thousand stamps in it. The sheer size of the album seems to overwhelm most collectors. So they give up. Vol 1's that have 10K or more stamps in them are not common. I've seen only a few that have twenty or more thousand stamps. So some collectors, but not very many, really do keep at it for quite some time. Most, though, run out of gas (or money) or maybe their "other" life just takes over -- you know, the small things like kids, jobs, the mortgage, sleep, and so on.

I'm very glad to see a PDF and Word document version of the entire stamp listing now linked here. I had been doing that very thing, myself, coming back every few months to cut-and-paste these stamp listings so I could someday print them all out (for my own use) as my guide to the Big Blue just in case the online version disappeared. Now it's much easier to do. On mine, I made each country name larger and changed them to red, so they're easier to find. Easy to do in not too many hours.

I suppose the next logical step is to raise the millions of dollars to buy the copyright to the Scott International Vol 1 in order to begin a much-needed digital editing designed to fix all the problems by adding all the less expensive stamps Scott left out in the last hundred years and dropping the few that became too expensive. On thicker paper. One can always fantasize the "overhauling and updating of Big Blue" -- but I'm not holding my breath.

Great work, Jim. Thanks. If anyone asks, the distance from Aden to Zululand is "a little over six years".

Enjoyed your comments Drew, and agree that BBs that are full are very rare indeed.

Chris Whitehouse's compact PDF file of the checklist is indeed an elegant solution to what would have been an inefficient use of paper. I have a copy printed out. I doubt I would have, if not for Chris.

If I would have known that the distance from Aden to Zululand was "a little over six years", I may not have started this project. ;-)

I think most people have blissfully forgotten the possibility to simply 'print' from their browser (and yes, you can do it from mobile phone and tablet as well). This way anyone can simply choose whether they desire the traditional paper output or digital file (I think all major operating systems and browsers support printing as PDF natively). At least I can't figure out a better and more cost-friendly way to do print-on-demand globally.

As for the formatting... If Jim wants, I can build a custom 'print CSS' which makes any browser printout of BigBlue-blog more user friendly (ie. left-side navigation and comments would not print etc). It is not a big task (less than 10 minutes of work)

As for preserving the work for future researchers... Not sure how things go in US, but here in Europe legal deposit copies have been 'de facto' even for non-print publications (such as blogs) for several years. Take a good look for this British Library advisory: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/search/non-print_legal_deposit.html . And similar systems exist in most countries here in Europe, and at least Australia and New Zealand. Meaning as long as it is digital, it is already being archived... Possibly the hardest part is accessing the data, meaning a visit to national library or similar researcher resource.

I appreciate Keijo's remarks about saving and printing the blog posts.

That got me thinking..

I copied this blog post, and then opened the Microsoft Word 10 program, where I can save it with a choice of multiple options. I'm sure this is not news to anyone, but I am more of a stamp collector than a computer guy.

I chose to save it in Word format first, keeping the formatting intact. Not bad!

Then I saved it as a PDF, using the standard optimize option for publishing online and printing.

Wow! Now that is something that could work!

Admittedly, it does not look like an ideal page, nicely formatted, as one would see in a well prepared book. But it does provide all the images and text mirrored as the blog presents, if one is more interested in content.

So this is what I propose to do, taking into consideration my limited formatting and publishing experience....

When I get some time between preparing blog posts, or working on my collection, or living real life I will save the blog posts that I am satisfied with as PDF files. Then, at some future date, I will offer the PDF files as downloads. The reader can then save them, or even print them out.

This will "preserve" the contents of the blog posts.

Admittedly, it will not be as useful for collectors as the live blog posts: as there, one can enlarge and download the stamp images, one of the primary features. And all the links work. ;-)

And, I might be interested sometime in self publishing selected posts as a book. That would require me to learn some new formatting skills however.

Perhaps what you need is - and this may be exactly what Keijo is talking about with his "Print CSS" - an option to print a "printer friendly" version. Then that can be "printed" as a PDF rather than having to actually print it on the printer.

"When I get some time between preparing blog posts, or working on my collection, or living real life I will save the blog posts that I am satisfied with as PDF files. Then, at some future date, I will offer the PDF files as downloads. The reader can then save them, or even print them out."

Jim that is roughly what I am doing with my Excel files of my album layouts in Excel/Open Office. There you can export the file direct from the spreadsheet file into PDF format, which I then host on Dropbox, creating a link that allows anyone who has it to download the file, and put that link in my blog sidebar where I have the PDF files listed. It works fairly smoothly, and dropbox is a fairly inexpensive "host" (I think US$20/month for unlimited space) to allow a platform for others to download. I use my Dropbox for other things besides my PDF album page handles, and it's very convenient.

The download is open to all who have the file link, so if you put the link in your sidebar (as I did on my blog) anyone can click it and the dropbox file will open and should have an option to download the file.

It is basically a small chunk (few lines) of code that goes into your blogs HTML. No coding skills required, just a copy-paste operation.

Print CSS basically controls what parts of the content are printable, and which are not. If you want a live example, try to print out some article at SCB. As you note only certain parts of visible content are printed.

I installed a print CCS print friendly application on my browser, the problem is that it doesn't respect the layout of Jims posts, images are for instance not where they were in the initial blogpost....

Is there a possibility of printing the commentaries? Some worthwhile information might be usefull to keep as well...

Yes, I will work on making an addendum for USA and Confederate States. I will just make a separate one for USA under "U" and one for Confederate States under "C" I will e-mail them to Jim and he can send them to you and/or post them on the blog.

Also, as far as an index...all the countries are in alphabetical order (labeled with the letter in large print in the corner) so I'm not sure how useful an index would be? One thing that could be done is to have the printer add dividers with tabs for each letter when you have it printed out. They actually asked me if I wanted to do that at my printer, but I declined.

O.K., good. I agree with Chris that I don't really need an index as everything is alphabetical. But I am quite familiar with the countries, and their names. For someone starting out in classical era WW, an index might be helpful.

The BB compact checklist PDF addendum for U.S.A and Confederate States (They are together) is now available for downloading. Scroll this blog post above, and one will find the link immediately below the BB compact checklist PDF link.

It consists of 5 pages. I printed out 3 double-sided pages, and attached it with staples to the inside rear cover of my printed out compact BB book.

One more question regarding the excel checklist of Chris. No separate mention of French Morocco (like offices in China, Egypt etc.) in the excell list. So these are counted in the total stamps of France?

If that's the case I might be cutting up France and the separate offices in the excell file

Wow what a blog with many much smarter than ì!My view is simple is best. I would like to see a book done perhaps with APS as Taylor did three times. I personally am not into spread sheets, check list etc. But the general write up by country and asso. Information is priceless.

Preserving anything not written down on paper is always shacky at best.

Talk to APS your work would be a real booster for them.Kind regards..David

The future, whether we like it or not, is digital. I agree that digital media, though, can be ephemeral. But I've gone down this digital path too far already, and turning the information into a book(s) is much more work than I want to do.